Posted
by
timothy
on Monday October 08, 2012 @01:58AM
from the he-said-kill-it-before-it-grows dept.

tomhath writes with this exerpt from a Reuters story: "The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an Indiana farmer's appeal that challenges the scope of Monsanto Co.'s patent rights on its Roundup Ready seeds. Mr. Bowman bought and planted 'commodity seeds' from a grain elevator. Those soybean seeds were a mix and included some that contained Monsanto's technology. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case over the objections of the Obama administration, which had urged the justices to leave the lower court rulings in place."

Politicians are generally Ignorant of the inner workings of giant multinationals. Politicians rely on "inudstry Experts" for advice. These "Industry Experts" must have experience in the relevant industry. Michael R Taylor is the head of the FDA I believe. He was also supposedly a former Monsanto executive. Given these facts I would assume that Mr Taylor would not want to see the company he had ties to losing their shirt in this deal and may be pushing for this case to go away. While the good news is that this Supreme Court has not be friendly to patents on natural processes, The bad news? Both Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan had ties to Monsanto in the litigation business. Whether they sued farmers for patented seed while working as litigators for Monsanto is beyond me. Maybe someone on/. can dig up some history on the work CT and EK did for Monsanto.

Maybe someone on/. can dig up some history on the work CT and EK did for Monsanto.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Monsanto, Clarence Thomas worked for the company in the 70's. I can't find any specific info on what he did for them. My guess is that Thomas would defend his refusal to recuse himself by pointing to the 30-years-plus that have lapsed since he was employed there.

Elena Kagan was Solicitor General in 2009 when, according to Truthout.org, "the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the previous ruling and placed a nationwide ban on Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa." Again from Truthout.org, "In March 2010, a month before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the solicitor general's office released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case." This brief argued that "The judgment of the court of appeals should be reversed, and the case should be remanded with instructions to vacate the permanent injunction entered by the district court." However, as far as I can determine, Kagan never worked for Monsanto.

Regarding Monsanto's influence in the Obama administration, Naturalnews.com has the following to say: "At least three former Monsanto execs hold high positions of power in the Obama administration. Michael Taylor, senior adviser to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), used to be vice president of Monsanto. Islam Siddiqui, former vice president of the Monsanto-funded lobbying group CropLife, is now a negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative on agriculture. And Roger Beachy, the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, is former director of a plant science center funded by Monsanto.

To me, the only surprise here is that people are surprised by all of this - it's just business as usual. When citizens allow their politicians to spend unlimited amounts of money on election campaigns, this kind of rampant abuse is inevitable.

Elena Kagan was Solicitor General in 2009 when, according to Truthout.org, "the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the previous ruling and placed a nationwide ban on Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa." Again from Truthout.org, "In March 2010, a month before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, the solicitor general's office released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case." This brief argued that "The judgment of the court of appeals should be reversed, and the case should be remanded with instructions to vacate the permanent injunction entered by the district court." However, as far as I can determine, Kagan never worked for Monsanto.

Its also worth noting that the Truthout.org claim that the Solicitor General "released a legal brief despite the fact that the US government was not a defendant in the case" is a bald-faced lie. The US government was the original defendant in the case at the trial level, which was a challenge that various government entities, particularly the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, had violated the federal law in the process of approving Round-Up Ready Alfalfa without an Environmental Impact Statement. Monsanto was not an original party to the case at trial level, but was an intervenor at trial after the decision and in the remedy phase. The U.S. briefs at the Supreme Court were not non-party amicus briefs, they were briefs "for federal respondents".
Documents relating to the case are available at SCOTUSblog [scotusblog.com].

To be precise, the criticism was based on the fact that the authors of the study didn't release all of their findings because they want to point out that the European Union didn't publish all the findings of the studies allowing GMO on the market.

And the author claims that a lot of the feedback is lobbying from Monsanto and others, but I can't objectively decide if that's true or not.

There were many, many criticisms, including:
1) The fact that the control group contained 10 mice. That's right. 10 mice.
2) Risk didn't scale with dose
3) One of the authors is a homeopath, and both have a long history of making dubious (at best) claims about GMO
4) The rats who were given water laced with Round-Up lived longer than the control group. If you believe GMO causes cancer based on this study, you should also be trumpeting the fact that Round-Up seems to prevent cancer
5) The rats used develop tumors at a very high rate

The study is beyond flawed or problematic. It's worthless, and it should be disregarded entirely by serious scientists and policy-makers.

> 1) The fact that the control group contained 10 mice. That's right. 10 mice.

Thanks for listing some of the problems. In addition to all of your other points, there is the distinct possibility that the results were "cherry-picked" (having a small control group would make this easier). Since the researchers aren't releasing all of the data (including how many times they may have run this experiment before obtaining this particular result), there is no way we can evaluate whether this is at all interesting.

A lot of people don't understand that because science is, for the large part, a self-correcting system on large time scales, the peer review process is not actually designed to totally eliminate wrong research results from being published. In fact, one can make the analogy to the optimization algorithm of simulated annealing, where, while trying to optimize a function with many local minima, it is beneficial to sometimes progress in directions which make the result less optimal, so that overall the minimum attained is more likely to be the global one.

The case may undermine a legal doctrine the Federal Circuit has adopted to extend the rights of patent holders. Under the so-called conditional sale exemption, patent holders can enforce their rights even after making a sale of the covered product. The doctrine has given patent holders the power to enforce restrictions against downstream purchasers...The Obama administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, told the justices that the conditional sale doctrine is inconsistent with the 2008 ruling. Even so, Verrilli said the court should reject the appeal because the Federal Circuit didn’t focus on the conditional sale issue in the Monsanto case.

Monsanto has a seed 'technology' nicknamed Terminator. You can grow one crop, and the seeds from that crop are sterile. (They can't grow any more crops from it.)There was a big stink about them selling them to farmers, seems the farmers don't like crippled seeds as for the past several thousand years (since agriculture was invented) they have been holding back seeds to help plant crops the next year.If Monsanto thought that wouldn't happen with their product, they are stupid beyond measure. If any court fin

Look, Monsanto is a horrible horrible company - but the cancer study stuff was flawed.They should be brought down for patent shakedowns, but the cancer thing wasn't really proven conclusively in any fashion from that study.

Well, people have been demonising saturated fat for no scientific reason for about 60 years, so at this point in time I wouldn't be that surprised that other things are being believed or overlooked for the wrong reasons.

Hmm no. The study done by Seralini, when analysed properly, shows that rats of the specific strain used during the trials developped the normal, expected proportion of tumors (which is 2 to 8 per group of 10 individuals), whether they were fed GMO, Roundup, both, or non-GMO corn. The author of this study mistakenly concluded that there was an effect, whereas his results were actually statistically insignificant.

FWIW, I wrote a blog post [wordpress.com] showing in a simple, graphical manner that the variation between the treatments in the Seralini study isn't statistically significant. The study isn't conclusive at all and it really shouldn't be used as the basis for anything. It's just too bad that it got so much attention (thanks to the press conference and sensational pictures) while its multiple flaws seem to have much less traction in the media and public discussion.

Obama does suck, but Mitt Romney is a far more dangerous choice - not so much because of his policies, but because the far-right Republican party would have control of at least one, and possibly both houses of Congress. They are a party of war-mongers, elitists who favor the rich, and have a downright hatred of government. Their extremist social policies seek to enforce a "Christian nation" "as the founders intended".

Mitt Romney is willing to say and do ~anything~ to get elected. He has no principles. And based on the positions that he -has- taken, he wants a regressive tax system where the "job creators" (aka rich people) are taxed very little, and us non-rich (aka moochers) have to "pay our fair share". He has pandered to Israel and repeatedly shown during his trips overseas, that he has no understanding of foreign policy or affairs, and makes brash, off-the-cuff remarks that can be seen as aggressive and undisciplined.

This man is extremely dangerous not only for America, but for the entire world. Obama might not be any good, but Romney will destroy the American dream, and several other countries along with it.

I fail to understand how I am a kool-aid drinker, when I point out that a) they both suck, and b) cite facts to back those arguments up. Mitt Romney was "for it before he was against it", and we see that especially with the health care plan that he passed in Massachusetts. Mitt Romney is an outright liar (worse than most politicians), and Obama didn't call him out on any of it during the first debate.
http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/ [factcheck.org]
Nowhere in my post did I say or even imply that Obama isn't also an ideologue. He takes liberties with the facts and with his record as well, but has not changed his platform 180 degrees in the course of a day. It has been the stated goal of the Republican party to make him a one-term president, and they have obstructed nearly every piece of controversial legislation that Democrats have introduced. The Senate filibustered more bills than in all the years this country has existed. With the "Tea Party" at the helm, they have shifted to the far right with their social, economic, and foreign policies.
Obama doesn't know how to play the game. His inexperience at politics means that he doesn't know the key players on a personal basis and never had to work with them, it means that he doesn't know how to use the bullypulpit of the president, and it means that he doesn't know how to use the 'carrot and stick' to get Congress to do what he wants. His inexperience is glaring.
I'm writing in Ron Paul for president. Living here in New Jersey (ugh!), the state is guaranteed to go to Obama, so my vote doesn't make a damn bit of difference anyways. Ron Paul's mantra is to "stop telling people what to do!" I don't agree with many of his positions, but I do think that he is the best person for the job.
I follow politics very closely, and although I'm just another asshole with an opinion, I at least think that it is an informed opinion.

This man is extremely dangerous not only for America, but for the entire world. Obama might not be any good, but Romney will destroy the American dream, and several other countries along with it.

I don't disagree with your assessment of Mitt, but you underestimate the danger Obama poses. Obama has taken radical Bush policies and by virtue of Democratic silence, has made them the new normal. Obama continues due process free detention with nary a peep from his party. He has extended this radical policy to include due process free execution. Libya destroyed the war powers act (the liberal achievement from the Viet Nam debacle which tried to put the power of war with congress where it belongs), thus setting the precedent that a president can start any war, anywhere, anytime, and Congress can go get bent.

These are dangerous and radical policies -- the type of monarchical powers we fought a revolution to escape. One man should not have the power to imprison you with no oversight, kill you with no oversight, or start a war with no oversight. The sad fact is, it took a Democrat to achieve all these things -- even GWB couldn't do the last two.

That is the danger of constant lesser evil voting. It leads inevitably to more evil. I suspect that if Mitt won however, Democrats would go back to pushing back against civil liberties violations and war as a kind of political pressure point. Maybe not, but at least we'd then all be clear that Democrats are the "New GOP".

Because if the Supreme Court says you can grow your own GMO seeds the entire industry disappears. Like them or not GMO crops are the future of agriculture.

While it might hurt the predatory aspects of Monsanto's business model, a ruling that a patent holder explicitly permitting GMO seeds to be sold intermixed with other seeds as "commodity seeds" allows purchasers of the commodity seeds to use them in the way they were used here, it wouldn't destroy the food crop industry, or even the GMO food crop industry.

After all, the manufacture, distribution and use of Monsanto's GM product is presumably regulated by some governmental agency? I tend to think that FDA is involved, at least? Monsanto's seed got onto that farmer's land without his knowledge or consent, and the potential damages he could suffer as a result of Monsanto's technology being inadvertently deployed on his land are demonstrably quite large. The ultimate fault is Monsanto's, for failing to adequately control their genetically modified produce's growth and proliferation.

He can probably not sell his seeds to Europe, we do not like genetically modified foods here. We let the americans be the Guinea Pigs of their own products.It seems like the US Government has the same slogan like "The Body Shop" when it comes to food: "Product not tested on animals". There is enough humans to test on.

It's sad that we're only the guinea pigs because Monsanto got a monopoly and is shoving the alternatives off the menu.

So our only choice in many cases is to eat Monsanto crap or eat nothing at all.

Monsanto backed us into a corner and not many of us are willing to starve to death to prove a point.

Sure, people who cornered the water market in the dry days of the wild west eventually saw their empires topple, in the interim many people paid dearly for to avoid losing something even more valuable.

Because roundup is a broad spectrum herbicide.While it can also be used as a spray over developing crops of plants engineered to be resistant to it, it was developed purely as a herbicide, and is useful in that role.

Isn't that like blaming the copyright holder for not controlling distribution?

FWIW, I am on the side of the people/farmers on this. There are too many problems with this genetically modified seed for it to be allowed to continue. There is a farmer's tradition of process and of course there is nature. But on top of that, breeding plants which create their own insecticide? Isn't it ALREADY creating super-bugs?

I would like to read what the Obama administration has to say about it and to hear what Romney would have to say about the issue as well. Other candidates would be great to hear from also, but the electoral colleges will not vote for anyone but the approved candidates selected from one of two parties.

Isn't that like blaming the copyright holder for not controlling distribution?

It's more like a record company breaking into your home and replacing half your CDs with their own, then demanding 100x the value of the CD from everyone that complained to the police about the break in.

I think a better analogy would be for the record company to write viruses that automatically rewrite all of your music files with illegal versions, and then suing you for owning and listening to illegal versions of your music.

When commodity seed contains so much protected content, it's not protected content anymore. The better analogy would be if you buy a Vanilla Ice CD and Queen sues Vanilla Ice for copyright infringement and wins. Then, later, you are sued for copyright infringement because you own a 3rd party copy of that infringement, even if you obtained the disk legally.

In this case, copyright really should apply rather than patents (it doesn't seem to, but bear with me). The patent would cover the process used to create these seeds, I assume. I may be wrong, but that's all it should cover. The genetic sequence would be that part that is copyrighted in this case, if you believe that should be allowed (which I don't).

The real infringer then would appear to be whoever sold the commodity seed to the farmer, as well as anyone between him and Monsanto in the supply chain that did not comply with their own license, if any.

According to the testimony of the lower court, yes, he did spray it with the explicit intent to kill non Roundup-Ready crops and grow only Roundup-Ready crops. Not that this is necessarily illegal. But beyond testimony, spraying Roundup on non-RR crops will absolutely kill them; he'd have no other reason to use glyphosate than to grow RR crops.

Also, unrelated to this response, why exactly was I modded "Troll" for my (admittedly flawed) analogy above? I'm not defaming or flamebaiting or attempting to be

A Roundup-ready plant is resistant to the herbicide Roundup. [scotts.com] The stuff kills the weeds, but not the crop. Good concept. Part of the green revolution to feed the planet. But I don't like the unrestricted patents, which should have expired by now --- for a lot of crops, anyway. This stuff has been around for years.

I think it was stupid to allow patents for genomes anyway. The self replicating device was found in nature. All that was done was to modify it. There is no invention. You could patent the origi

I agree with you in principle, but it's probably a much harder legal argument.

Hey would have to establish all the elements of the tort of negligence against Monsanto1) That Monsanto owed him a duty of care2) That Monsanto breached that duty of care3) That that breach was the proximate cause of harm4) That he suffered actual harm

1&2 would be pretty dicey to claim since Monsanto has no contractual relationship with him, nor were they involved in how his fields were contaminated. There's really no precedent for this kind of thing since there has never been IP that reproduced of it's own will...

The effect of him winning would pretty much destroy Monsanto's GMO business model though. Then everyone could just claim that their fields were "contaminated" and therefore dont have to pay royalties.

I'm glad that the supremes are hearing it though... this really needs to be established.

'Every rapist could simply claim the victim consented'.(And yes, the analogy is a bit silly)However, intentionally planting it would remain a crime, as would not taking reasonable care.Does it make the investigation more awkward - certainly.

Shows just how many foxes we have guarding the so-called henhouse without much oversight. Definitely a problem when people who are trusted to make public decisions are too heavily weighed by their own personal economic interests. (If it makes their stock shares go up, what the fuck do they care about the rest of us?) Revolving door policy is worse than insider trading in some regards.

At least that diagram will give you names to start with, the rest would still be up to you to research.

Incorrect. Monsanto seed did NOT drift onto Bowman's land without his knowledge or consent. Thus far, no such case has been litigated where seed drift or cross-pollination has occurred. Obviously that is a very big question that will come out of this ruling, should the court find for Monsanto, as it will arguably put the onus of burden on farmers to test for and destroy infringing crops caused by cross pollination. That issue, however, is not in debate here.

Bowman realized that a staggering percentage of soybean seeds on the commodity market were Roundup-Ready GM seeds. Normally a farmer has to sign a contract that he will not replant any additional seeds and will buy future generations of seeds from Monsanto. Replanting seeds for these farmers has not been considered a patent infringement but instead a contract violation. The patent infringement idea was unprecedented until this case. Bowman, who had not signed a Monsanto contract, simply decided to buy contract-free seeds on the commodity market, as Monsanto-contracted growers can sell the seeds they are not allowed to replant for general purposes such as food production. Bowman had the novel idea to take these seeds and plant them, spray the seeds with Roundup (thus killing off all the non-Roundup-Ready seeds), and have contract-free Roundup-ready seeds that he could replant at will. Monsanto, which monitors the purchase of Roundup to Roundup-ready seeds under contract, determined Bowman had purchased enough Roundup to be running an un-contracted operation. Unable to ping him on the contract issue, they requested him to stop. He refused, and they sued under the patent infringement theory.

The question that will be debated here is whether or not subsequent generations of Roundup-Ready crops, by the act of growing them, independently constitute patent infringement. Normally for infringement to occur there has to be some performative action. Monsanto is arguing (and the lower court agreed) that the performative act of planting the seeds in the first place is sufficient to transfer infringement to subsequent generations, and therefore the plants can essentially infringe upon each new growth without Bowman's performative action on subsequent growings.

It may seem pretty dumb, but it has the potential to majorly impact the food industry. If the court finds for Monsanto, the "auto-infringing crop" theory would make accidental infringers of any farmer who encountered cross-pollination or seed drift. Although no such cross-pollination has been successfully argued -- in all cases where farmers have brought this defense, it has been very well proven that they were lying through their teeth and had planted Monsanto crops in violation of their contract. Conversely, if the court finds for Bowman, this would in effect nullify Monsanto's patent protection on their seeds, as no farmer would buy from the developer, bound to a contract, where they could just go out and buy commodity seed at a fraction of the cost.

I've researched GMO patent intensively, written articles, and have followed the case for a while now. I think the one constant among GMO patent cases is that both sides -- Monsanto and farmers alike -- have done nothing but provide a tremendous amount of misinformation about the other side. No party line can be trusted. Monsanto argues that they're just trying to make a living and don't gouge anyone, being a humble food producer. Farmers argue that they're being put upon by the big corporate food monopoly and haven't done anything inappropriate other than try to grow organic foods. Both sides are lying and are trying to wage war to maximize their profits. Being as rabidly anti-DRM as we are, I suppose Slashdot readers will support the farmers. Either way, this issue is pretty big for determining whether the judiciary is embracing the pendulum swinging back to more restrictive patents or is continuing the trend of expansive patent protections.

Also worth noting, Monsanto's patents on Roundup-Ready soybeans are set to expire in the next few years, IIRC. The question is going to be entirely academic and legal and will likely have no effect on Roundup-ready crops at all after the patent expires.

2nd generation of seed non-conforming under patent aside, statutes under the commerce clause are what is at stake in this case.

Ruling for the patent holder enforces a restraint of trade eliminating free market economy in agri-businessANDUpholding the patent establishes a ' fiat currency' whose store of value ( seed) and medium of exchange are enforced by law. SCOTUSRuling in favor of Monsanto will sanction a monopoly

Agreed. But that is exactly what a patent enforces... a monopoly for a limited time. SCOTUS will not overturn on the monopoly issue alone, as Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution is explicitly clear on acknowledging a monopoly. It's likely gone too far in application, but patents are designed to restrain free market trade and to allow for a "currency" of sorts as upheld by law as well as to sanction a monopoly. The question, statutorily, is whether IP protection has gone too far and now enforces a monopoly no longer successful in promoting "useful arts and sciences" by rewarding innovation. Unfortunately, SCOTUS has been extremely shy of the issue, especially in copyrights (see Eldred v. Ashcroft). They will likely rule on the more narrow issue of subsequent generation/self-replicating infringement.

It's fallacious reasoning to put the company Monsanto at one side of the story and 'the farmers', on the other side. Specifically, it's called a hasty generalization. There are many stories about farmers running into problems with Monsanto and you can't just claim that all those farmers are lying and just want to max profit. Talk to some Indian farmers for example, o wait, thousands of them have committed suicide after they got conned by Monsanto.

Bowman should win and this is exactly how intellectual property will work when patents and copyrights are eliminated. Contracts will rule and people that are not parties to the contract cannot be held responsible.

Take a DVD as an example. The company selling the DVD could make it a part of the contract to buy the DVD that the person wont copy it. But if someone copies the DVD and it becomes available no third party to the coping could be responsible. This puts the onerous of protecting the distribution of t

That's why trade secret protection hasn't taken off, though. Once you're outside of the contract, no protection exists for trade secrets. And once a trade secret is available to the public, it can no longer be protected. This wouldn't help Monsanto, in this case. Once they sold their seed to the farmer, and the farmer could sell the seed on the commodity market (which he needs to do to make a living), the seed is available to the public and poof -- no trade secret protection anymore. Plus, trade secrets can be reverse engineered, which would completely wreck the pharmaceutical industry; spend a few ten-thousand to reverse-engineer the product your competitor spend millions on researching? Sure! Why not?

Granted, I think many of us are of the opinion that Monsanto doesn''t need or deserve legal help, but there is a need for patents/trademarks/copyrights, even if on a significantlymore limited scope than we see them today.

So if much of the commodity seed out there is now roundup-ready, farmers may have an increasingly difficult time buying non-modified seed. That means Monsanto would have poisoned the well of the competition: natural seeds. There are two monopolistic behaviors here: protecting your inventive production method and choking out competing production methods through non-market actions. Patents are only meant to support the former, not the latter. Fostering market competition between production methods (i.e. G

This is the very basis (seed drift, AFAIK) on which Monsanto has seized lands so far. Every case of Monsanto land-grabbing is a citation.

No, every Monsanto case litigated thus far regarding Roundup-Ready crops has involved farmers gathering seeds from their own contracted plantings (or in Bowman's case, a commodity source) and replanting them with the intention of growing Roundup-Ready crops. No case at all has ever involved seed drift, which means that the seeds have fallen across someone's property line so that a non-RR farmer winds up accidentally growing RR soybeans. Same goes for cross-contamination and cross-pollination. Yes, a number of farmers have claimed seed drift as a defense. In every case, the jury determined that the farmer was lying, usually evidenced by the large quantities of Roundup they were purchasing. "No, I didn't plant those GMOs; I didn't even know they were there. I just so happened to buy a huge vat of Roundup to spray on them, even though I didn't know they could tolerate glyphosate." That argument didn't work. Monsanto, for all of their big-corporate-y evil, has never prosecuted a case on the grounds that a farmer has raised RR crops from seed drift or cross-pollination. Period. Every case on record goes against your vague generalizations. So either you are misinformed or you are trolling. There are innumerable reasons to despise Monsanto. I would suggest adopting one that is based on fact rather than hyperbolic party-line rhetoric.

They contaminated his crops with their seed. They owe him compensation.

When GM labelling comes in in California, he will have to label his crop as GM contaminated, and that will reduce his profits. He did not seek that contamination, Monsanto were lax about cross contamination.

It may be true that he grew more as a result, but that does not mitigate the damage they did. How is he supposed to know that the seeds he buys and plants are contaminated with GM seeds? In effect they're burdening ever farmer with a requirement to detect their GM crop contamination, as necessary for the GM labeling requirements.

Monsanto polluted the seed pool, and others should not pay for their pollution.

They claim he's growing more beans than his seed purchase could have produced. Therefore he must have added the Roundup ones separately.

He says it was part of this mix. In that case, it would be the fault of whoever sold him the seed, logically, though legally is another matter.

TFA is confusing, but it seems he's also claiming an earlier court ruled that using the seeds to grow and produce new seeds, that the new seeds (used for yet another generation rather than sale) were infrin

The affirmative defense of the patent exhaustion stems from the fact that a) Monsanto explicitely allows the sale of Roundup Ready soybeans to grain elevators as commodity and b) he bought the seeds from the grain elevators als commodity seeds. So he argues that if the exhaustion doctrine does not cover this case, there is no point in even having an exhaustion doctrine in the first place:

Bowman further argues that if the right to use pat-ented seeds does not include the unlimited right to grow subsequent generations free of liability for patent in-fringement, then any exhaustion determination “is use-less.”

This is one of two cases before the Supreme Court this fall that present challenges to the "first sale" doctrine (and several related legal concepts). The other is a case involving the sale of textbooks [marketwatch.com] (I believe that this was discussed on slashdot back in the spring).

Since God used the first crop of seeds to produce new plants, I think the whole patent issue boils down to this infrigement made by nature or God. Since Monsanto can't sure nature, they will have go for the big man himself.I think Monsanto needs to sue God or in his absence his nearest representative, the Pope, for making illegal copies of their seed.

They are not terrible sinners. They are very good ones. Same as most Christian fundamentalists. Those guys are all trying hard to find a way to get a camel through the eye of needle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle [wikipedia.org]

I tell the story of the genetic engineer I met who was so born again he didn't believe in evolution (true story). This happened in Saint. Louis. Guess where Monsanto's headquarters is? Yep, he worked for Monsanto. They have an inside line to God you know. It would be like suing themselves.

First of all, to get this out of the way-Monsanto is obviously quite amoral, and their business practices are largely indefensible. However, it's worth discussing the actual issues at hand here.

The legal issues are basically:1. Is it infringement when contaminated seeds are planted unintentionally and they contain patented genetic engineering. I would say no, because my understanding is that the tort of infringement must be willful.(IANAL)2.Does the right of first sale allow seeds to be reproduced to create

Monsanto is clearly bully here, because in any scenario, farmer didn't violate the contract, so they just showing their power.

However, this is more like contract dispute. Seems like company understood that they chances of going after farmer contract is close to null, so they decided to punish him by betting on their golden egg. That neatly opened unforseen posibility to challange seed (and any DNA, nano, etc.) patents in SCOTUS. Farmer didn't care about patents, he just wants not to pay for stuff he didn't

The short version: Don't own his own seeds and once you buy Monsanto seeds they own your business..

"A federal appeals court found that soybean farmer Vernon Bowman infringed on Monsanto patents when he planted second-generation soybeans [commondreams.org] that were the product of seeds he had purchased from Monsanto"

Lots of people here will argue the merits one way or another, adding ever more subtle points to a cauldron of legal opinion that attempts to guess the outcome......and it doesn't matter one whit.

Regardless of the law, the lower court decision cannot be allowed to stand simply as a matter of practicality. If it does, Monsanto stands to control virtually all farmland in America and put all farmers out of business. Monsanto would find itself in the position of controlling all food prices and dictating whatever terms it likes in the manner of process and production.

The simplest solution is to rule that, absent any contractual obligations, the patent holder's rights are exhausted after first sale of self-reproducing physical objects. For anything beyond this, the rules of contract law would apply. Farmers would be bound by whatever contracts they enter into with Monsanto.

Monsanto's mistake was in freely allowing the sale of the harvested seed. A second-generation-seed purchaser is under no contractual obligation to Monsanto because they didn't enter into a contract. If Monsanto wants this to happen differently, then they need to word the original contract in such a way that this can't happen - so that the original purchaser can't sell seed for replanting, for instance.

Monsanto needs to go away. Not only are they simply predatory, they are actually dangerous to the environment. Let's pretend that insecticide plants will never ever harm humans in any quantity. Let's just talk about the surviving insects who are developing immunity to the chemicals and becoming super-bugs. Will Monsanto be held liable for this creation of theirs?

Let's just talk about the surviving insects who are developing immunity to the chemicals and becoming super-bugs. Will Monsanto be held liable for this creation of theirs?

Roundup is a broadleaf herbicide, not an insecticide. Also, the allegedly infringing GMO plants don't produce Roundup or any other pesticide, they only allow Roundup to be applied to them without killing the plants. In order for them to behave differently than his other plants, the farmer would have to douse his crops in Roundup (which he did).

Can we try to at least get the facts straight before we start going off into left field with our interpretations?

In Europe, if you have a valid patent for a genetically engineered product, this patent only covers the result of the genetical engineering (i.e. what comes out of the lab), not the yield that is the result of natural self replication.

So even if someone deliberately sells "Monsanto seed", it is not a patent violation, provided that the seed is not produced by the genetical engineering process wich is covered by the patent.

Monsanto in the 1970's was a very different company than it is now. During the 1990's Monsanto, like a lot of large chemical companies split into two firms, one of these was Solutia which is the chemical arm of Monsanto, and Monsanto which was the life sciences operations of Monsanto which included GD Searle. This life sciences company merged with Pharmacia and Upjohn which became Pharmacia.

Late the same year Pharmacia spun off the agriculture business segment of their business which was mostly parts of the Monsanto life sciences operations.

Since the customers of this Ag business were used to the name Monsanto, that's the name they adopted.

So today's Monsanto is missing all of the old chemical business that is actually Solutia, and parts of the old life science business (drugs etc.) and is pretty narrowly focused in the ag business.

You see a lot of claims that Monsanto is a chemical company, well really that's not true any more and hasn't been true for about 15 years.

I would be very surprised if Clarence has any contacts at the current Monsanto.

The elite have a lot at stake and aren't going to let the supremes derail their gravy train.

This will be a lesson to all under the grindstone not to trifle with the will of their betters. Got nailed with a federal precedent? Should have kept your mouth shut and left well enough alone instead of stirring up an even bigger hornet's nest.

Monsanto knows their genetic patent is being spread by bees, and yet either nobody is correctly arguing this in court or nobody cares. If someone sued on that issue alone Monsanto's patents would be declared invalid long ago. All these farmers who have had bee by plantings of monsanto's seeds into their crops would be owed a lot of money.

By Monsanto's logic, if some of my patented drink mix unintentionally found it's way into an aquifer, anyone who gets water from that aquifer owes me money if I demand it. Soon enough I'll own the water cycle!

In Bowman's case, he planted Roundup Ready seeds as his first-crop in each growing season from 1999-2007 and did not save seed in compliance with licensing agreements. But he also purchased commodity seed from a local grain elevator for a late-season planting, or what is known as a "second-crop."

The farmer applied glyphosate to his second soybean crops and was able to identify herbicide-resistant plants, from which he then saved seed for subsequent years of second-crop planting, according to the court documents.

So this is really a case over both patent exhaustion and contract law. It's interesting that the seed selection step is the same process that got Percy Schmeiser in trouble.

If Monsanto's seeds are patented (and I think it would be a cruel injustice if they are), then somebody ought to sue the ass off of that company for purposely littering neighbor's croplands with patented seeds that cause economic damage to neighboring farmers.

There is probably justification for calling many "hybrid" crops today as genetically modified. That pretty much means that nearl 100% of today's food crops are GM in one way or another.

If you are concerned only with genetic manipulations that have been done in the last 20 years or so, you are probably missing the boat. The manipulations of plant genome over the last 150 years have been quite extreme and there are examples of creating non-viable forms. There is no indication that this sort of manipulation